When Evil Rules – Part 2 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Where does terrible evil come from? Why do Hitler's emerge to wreak death and destruction on helpless people? Understanding the roots of evil helps us deal with it. Today, more characteristics of evil as seen in the life of Abimelech long ago.

Stay with us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, you're teaching us that evil people are motivated first by opportunity, but also by the vulnerability of their victims.

Dave, you're absolutely right. Now, in the case of Hitler, he was taken through the deepest levels of occult transformation. So, he was really speaking even under the inspiration of Satan, tremendous power. But at the same time, we must recognize that within every human heart, there are seeds of wickedness, and we must understand that. And even as we look at humanity in general, we may think that the number of Hitler's, so to speak, are few. But actually, if they had the opportunity, as you mentioned in your intro, if they had the opportunity, and if victims were available, you'd be surprised at the evil that exists, even in so-called normal people. And that's why we need redemption.

You know, the Bible says that the heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. And we here at Running to Win are deeply committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ that pulls us out from within all of the darkness and enables us to walk in light. I want to ask you a question today. All those of you who are listening, would you pray about the possibility of helping us get the ministry of Running to Win to even more people in more countries of the world? At the end of this broadcast, I'm going to be giving you some contact info.

For now, let us listen. You say, well, would Hitler still have been an evil man, even if he wouldn't have had that opportunity to become great? And the answer is yes, but his sphere of influence would have been much smaller. If he had ended up as a male clerk, as his father had done, he probably would have done a lot of damage. He'd have hurt a lot of women as he already did.

He would have been a force of destruction, but on a very small scale. What evil needs is a grand opportunity and Hitler and Abimelech both had one. Well, let's go on to the second characteristic of evil. It seeks for vulnerability. Evil destroys all rivals.

It crosses that line. If somebody commits a sin, we don't necessarily call him evil, but he becomes evil when he destroys everybody around him to protect his own sick self, either for self-preservation or self-exaltation. Let's read the rest of the text. They gave him 70 shekels of silver from the temple of Baal birth. That's where the people worshiped in an idolatrous way. And Abimelech used it to hire reckless adventurers who became his followers.

He went to his father's home in Orphra and on one stone murdered his 70 brothers except one who was able to escape Jotham. What's happening here? Well, obviously you have a man who's going to consolidate his power, but there's something else taking place and that is what he is doing is making sure that he can work out that vengeance in his heart. You think you're better than I am because you are the son of wives and I'm the son of a concubine.

I'll show you a thing or two. And so he begins to kill and murder and he becomes a butcher. Now you'll never understand the nature of evil unless you realize that evil people cross that line and they destroy everyone around them, as I mentioned, to protect themselves. And so what you have is they may not use murder in today's society because that has consequences for which they might have to pay a life sentence in jail maybe. And so what they do is they use verbal abuse. They use changing the rules. They use manipulation. They stir up trouble.

They tell lies and in the process they keep insulating themselves from any possibility that they may be wrong. Let me put it this way. An evil person lives in two different worlds. In world A he could even be attending a church, teaching a Sunday school and be thought really well of in the community.

That's world A. In world B he could be molesting a child. He could be an adulterer. He could be a thief. He could be doing all kinds of wrong things.

And world A is insulated from world B and those two never do meet and he does not allow them to meet. If you'd have asked Bimalik, are you doing wrong? Would he have said, yeah, I really did wrong. Of course he didn't do wrong. Because remember the truly evil person does not see the evil as residing in himself, but he sees it only as residing in others. You have to understand that an evil person believes that it is his responsibility to take a crooked world and to make it straight and he's going to make it straight by destroying everyone so that he can protect himself.

He really does believe that he's doing right. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever tried to reason with someone who's evil? In an entirely different context, I was in northern New York last week at a camp and I spoke on evil, but not this message.

It was some other message and a woman came up to me and said, we have two children. And she said, my husband became evil. He became an adulterer, which is usually the path to evil. And now what he has done is he has poisoned the attitude of the children towards me. He has done everything that he possibly can to destroy my reputation. He has made up lies. He takes all truth and gives it a half turn and he's done all the damage he possibly can. That's the nature of evil. That's the nature of the Abimelek.

Well, let's hurry on. What happens to those who are evil? There's a third step here.

Thankfully, there's a third step and that is that eventually he overreaches Abimelek does. Now I'm going to tell you the story because the ninth chapter of Judges is rather long. This Jotham who escaped, bless him.

I want you to visualize now. Here's Mount Gerizim and he runs to the top of Mount Gerizim and he gives a sermon. He tells a parable.

It's the first parable ever found on the pages of scripture. And don't you wish you had a video camera to see him do this and to have picked up his sermon? And he's preaching to the people in the valley.

And because there is a natural amphitheater there where Joshua had the tribes confess the Lord as their God is centuries earlier, he's standing on the mountain and he's shouting and he is saying, this is what happened. He says that people asked an olive tree to reign over them. All the other trees said, let's let the olive tree rule. And the olive tree said, I'm too busy creating all of the oil.

I won't. And then they went to the fig tree and then they went to the vine and each of them said, I'm too busy doing what I'm created to do. And then they went to the thorn bush and they asked the thorn bush to become king. And then the parable goes on very sarcastically and says that the thorn bush said, come and hide in my shade. Well, of course the thorn bush is too small. Nobody can hide in a thorn bushes shade. Thorn bushes are really thorns in the side of all farmers because the only thing they're good for is fire. And so what Jotham says is either accept the fact that you made a good decision by putting Abimelech as your king and crowning him and rewarding him for the evil that he did. Either say that that's good or else admit that it's bad and let fire come from this thorn bush and devour all of you. And with that, the Bible says in verse 21 Jotham fled.

Would you blame him? And so he gets out of the way because he knows that he's certainly on Abimelech's wanted list. And what happens then is God begins to intervene.

That's the most comforting part of this passage of scripture. Because when we see evil reign, when we see it begin to take hold, when we see destruction and there is no retribution and people get by and oftentimes evil people do, they'll get by for an awfully long time. In the case of Abimelech, it was three years. In the case of Hitler, it was 12. And in the case of people that you know, it may be years and years and years and years.

And it seems as if they are never caught. And you say, where is God in all of this? Well, we pick up the text in verse 23. After Abimelech had governed Israel three years, God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the citizens of Shechem who acted treacherously against Abimelech. Very briefly, what happened is they began to say, why is he getting all the money and all the tariffs of the trade that is taking place?

We're going to take it. And Abimelech didn't like that very much. And so antagonism developed between him and the city. And pretty soon there was a civil war. And in the midst of this civil war, the people of Shechem, they gather in a tower and they think that they are secure. Abimelech wants to come and burn the place down.

And I'm going to go right now to the end of the chapter. In verse 52, it says, Abimelech went to the tower and stormed it. But as he approached the entrance to the tower to set it on fire, a woman dropped an upper millstone on his head and cracked his skull. Hurriedly, he called to his armor bearer and said, draw your sword and kill me so that they can't say a woman killed him. So his servant, yeah, a little bit of ego there maybe. So his servant ran him through. That's a euphemism for saying that the sword went through him and there was a mess to be cleaned up. And he died.

I like that. So his servant ran him through and he died. The Bible is so characteristic often of understatement. When the Israelites saw that Abimelech was dead, they went home. Thus God repaid the wickedness that Abimelech had done to his father by murdering his 70 brothers.

God also made the men of Shechem pay for their wickedness because many of them died in this battle and the curse of Jotham and Jotham was the man, you remember, who went to the top of Mount Gerizim and gave his parable came upon them. What I'd like to do is to bring this down to where all of us live so that we can understand the evil a little better and our struggles with it. First of all, the seeds of evil lie in all of us.

Can you accept that? The seeds of evil lie in all of us. When Eva Brown's movies of Adolf Hitler first became known and all of us have seen them. They've been on television many times. There were many people who protested strongly saying that the public should never see those movies.

Why? Because they humanized Hitler. If you remember Hitler, he's there in Berchtesgarten at the Berghof and he's on that veranda and he's just enjoying himself.

He's looking over the beautiful trees of the area. He's tousling the hair of a four-year-old girl. He's playing with his dog Blondie and just enjoying a wonderful evening out and they say that that makes him too human. What we want to do is to keep Hitler as a mysterious person, half demon, half human. Don't let people see his human side. But Hitler was human.

Same blood ran through his veins as runs through all of us. As a matter of fact, did you know that there are in the world today thousands and thousands and thousands of Hitlers? But we've not heard from them and the reason is because they have not had the opportunity to act out the evil that is in their heart. But given the right situations, the right conditions, the right amount of animosity and they would do the very same thing.

Just read the newspaper and see the wars and the struggles and the evil of this world. What do you think? Do you think that when the Hitler's mother had that little baby in her arms, was he somehow more evil at that point than others? I don't think so.

I don't think Abimelek was. All that you need is the right combination of sin that has never been dealt with in your life, enough rage and anger and an opportunity to exercise it and no restraints from God or casting off the restraints of God and you might be capable of the most hideous evil that you strongly condemn in others. And I might be too. I want you to know today that it is certainly possible for that kind of evil to lurk in our hearts. So before we criticize others, before we condemn others, let's take a long look inside and see that the heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

Who can know it? First lesson. Secondly, evil people must be submitted to God. What are you going to do with evil?

Bonhoeffer eventually joined a movement to try to overcome Hitler. But one of the things that we cannot do in interpersonal relationships is fight evil with evil. And I'll tell you why. You have to understand evil people have no rules.

Even when you play according to their rules, they will change the rules as soon as you win. Because for them, there are no scruples. Their conscience is seared as with a hot iron. They no longer fear or feel anything, any prompting from God.

They are no longer blessed with a gift of guilt. And remember several months I told you about evil people and I reminded you that there are certain animals that emit an odor in order to make sure that predators do not get to them. We think immediately of one kind of animal that is both black and white. We think of the skunk and you realize of course that the skunk has this powerful odor that it emits and it overtakes everyone in his vicinity.

But to him, so far as we know, it smells like Chanel number five. You can't fight evil with evil. What happens in the text here is that God comes and stirs up opposition and brings about the death of Abimelech. That's why the Bible says, dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves. I will recompense says the Lord. You try to straighten out as many evils as you possibly can in this world and you work toward justice and the like. But at the end of the day, you know that you have to commit this to God because you yourself are not capable of being able to fight an evil person because he's playing by all kinds of different rules and you are submitting him to God and trusting God to bring justice to that situation. If you're living with an evil person who is abusing you, by the way, get help. When Saul tried to kill David and threw spears at him, David did not throw spears back because you don't throw a spear for a spear, but David did flee.

Get help. But at the same time, we have to trust here the judgment of God. Now you look at the text here, it says that Abimelech was repaid for the evil that he did.

God begins the repaying process in this life, sometimes after a period of years or months as the case may be, and then the repayment begins to accumulate and continues after this life in the life to come. But I believe that the scales of justice are so finely tuned that despite all the evil in the world, we will be able to sing with enthusiasm and integrity. Great and mighty is the Lord God Almighty, just and true are his ways.

It says regarding Jesus that when he was reviled, he reviled not in return, but he kept entrusting himself to him that judges righteously. He kept saying, God, you are the final judge. In this world, we have court cases. In this world, we have lawsuits. In this case, we have conflict. We fight with swords or with guns or with words or with manipulation. But at the end of the day, we realize that justice is in the hands of God. Let me give you a third lesson. All sin, even the evil variety, must be paid for, must be paid for.

What do I mean by that? I've already talked to you about God's justice, and that means that payment must be made. And you and I pay for our sins in this life with a kind of temporal punishment. And if we do evil and commit a crime, we will actually go to jail or whatever. And there are certain consequences to disobedience. Theologians talk about the governmental consequences of sin.

Those are the natural consequences that take place when you hit a series of dominoes. And when we sin, we always do. But when it comes to the eternal penalty, we can be absolved from that because of the death of Christ. You see, either we pay for it personally in hell forever, but because we are finite beings, even eternal suffering can never appease a holy God. The temporal suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross who died for sinners, he absorbed, you see, he absorbed our sin. That is for those who believe on him and trust him as savior so that he ultimately takes our penalty. And what that means in practical terms is that some of you listening to me have been evil.

You are doing evil or there's evil in your past that you are responsible for. I want you to know today that even you can be absolved of the eternal penalty if you believe in Jesus. And you can imagine now the tremendous weight of punishment that was upon him when he died on the cross to think that he absorbed for those who believe he absorbed the full penalty of their sin and evil. And that's the good news of the gospel. That's why when people write to us because of our radio ministry and we do get a lot of letters from people who are in jail, we can tell the vilest of sinners who truly believes that moment from Jesus a pardon receives and we do hear from the vilest of sinners. That's the wonder of the gospel. It's the wonder of the cross.

The terrors of law and of God with me can have nothing to do. My savior's obedience and blood hides all of my sins from view. My name on the palm of his hands, eternity cannot erase. Forever there it stands a mark of indelible grace. Let's pray. Our father, I want to pray today for those who are being harassed by evil people, for those who are being manipulated, used, people who are being destroyed by vicious lies. We pray today father that you shall grant the grace to give those things to you and to simply say father into your hands we commit these situations because at the end of the day we do believe in the final justice of a holy God. And for those who are listening today who've never trusted Christ as savior, people who think that they have sinned too much to be forgiven, father cause them to believe and to see the wonder of Christ's love if only they would accept him and say Jesus I want you to be my sin bearer. Grant that father in the lives of all so that all who listen may come to the glorious light of the gospel of Jesus Christ who is the image of God. Grant that oh father we pray in Jesus name amen. And once again from my heart to yours if God has spoken to your heart would you receive Christ as savior would you flee to him believe the gospel because as this message has been emphasizing we are indeed evil people apart from Christ we walk in darkness he brings us light. How do we know that we are sinners it is when we see God. I'm holding in my hands a letter from a Spanish listener and running to win by the way is in Spanish because of people just like you who support this ministry but this listener says this program is wonderful it helps me grow and have a deeper look at who God is. And then it goes on to give God gratitude for the goodness of the gospel. I want you to pray about the possibility of helping this ministry and becoming an endurance partner endurance partners stand with us regularly with their gifts and of course their prayers now the amount that you give is entirely your decision but here's what you do you go to rtwoffer.com that's rtwoffer.com investigate becoming an endurance partner go to rtwoffer.com click on the endurance partner button or you can pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218-9337 perhaps you've heard me say it before but running to win is in 50 different countries in seven different languages and we hope to continue to expand this ministry thank you so much for praying about joining the running to win family go to rtwoffer.com click on the endurance partner button you can write to us at running to win 1635 north LaSalle Boulevard Chicago Illinois 60614 pastor Erwin Lutzer has concluded when evil rules the seventh of 12 messages on the topic we've been down this road before taken from the book of judges next time we'll meet a man named Jephthah and take a look at God man and a foolish decision running to win is sponsored by the moody church